My Faith Was Removed from the Military’s Records—Not from American History

By Rev. Rebecca Hinds

Originally published in The Post and Courier on July 19, 2026

Jesus instructed his followers: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31)

Few commands in Scripture are as familiar—or as difficult to practice.

For Jesus wasn’t speaking only of the neighbors who are easy to love. He meant every neighbor, including those who don’t look like us, think like us, love like us, pray like us, or vote like us. Loving our neighbors requires us to see their humanity before judging our differences.

It’s a tall order and many of us fall short. Thankfully, grace gives us the chance to forgive ourselves, forgive one another, and begin again in love.

But there is another response to this difficult commandment that has become more common in recent years: if loving certain people feels too hard, make them disappear.

Erase them from the story. Alter or strip away the signs that acknowledge them on public lands and in museums. Ban the books that tell their stories. Dismantle the programs designed to ensure they have a place at the table. Rewrite history.

Because if people can be erased, then you don’t have to love them.

You can’t love those you refuse to see.

This hit home for me last month, when the Department of Defense erased 180 religions traditions from the list of official affiliations available to our military service members–including Mormon, Atheist, Humanist, Native American, and my own tradition, Unitarian Universalist.

As a result, Unitarian Universalist (UU) service members can no longer identify their faith on official military paperwork and may no longer receive the UU chalice symbol on future government-issued veterans’ headstones.

To be clear, this move does not eliminate the rights or protections Unitarian Universalist and other religious minority service members enjoy. Constitutional protections remain in place, religious accommodation standards remain unchanged, and commanders continue to have a legal obligation to respect sincerely held beliefs.

But this attempted erasure still stings.

Especially because Unitarians and Universalists have always been at the heart of American life.

The first Army chaplain – Rev. John Murray – was a Universalist commissioned into the Continental Army by General George Washington in 1775, a year before the Declaration of Independence was written.

Several Founding Fathers, including John Adams and Benjamin Rush, were either Unitarians or Universalists, and Thomas Jefferson espoused Unitarian views.

Unitarians and Universalists were among both those who signed the Declaration of Independence and those who drafted the U.S. Constitution.

There have been four Unitarian presidents: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft.
And UUs can claim countless ancestors who served in the military – including Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded one of the first Black regiments – and current UU veterans, like James Clayton Flowers, the oldest veteran in the United States, who was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Unitarians and Universalists, like so many other religious minorities, are woven into the fabric of American history and American military service.

No government action can erase a person’s faith nor lessen the powerful guidance it provides for those who serve. Nevertheless, I urge the Department of Defense to reverse this decision.

Furthermore, I urge all of us to resist the temptation to erase those whose identities, beliefs, or stories differ from our own.

When it would be all too easy to turn a blind eye, may we choose the harder path—the one Jesus laid before us—not by trying to make our neighbors disappear, but by seeing them fully, recognizing their humanity, and loving them anyway.